We review cognitive-linguistic approaches to conveying meaning, sound, and orthographic information across scripts in order to highlight the impact of variability in written and spoken language on learning to read and to write words. With examples of word recognition and word writing from different scripts, including Chinese, Arabic, Persian, and…

Many offline studies on third language acquisition suggest strong connections between speakers' L3 and L2 rather than between their L3 and L1, especially if the foreign languages are typologically related (Cenoz, Hufeisen, & Jessner, 2001; Singleton, 2001). However, a recent online study investigating trilingual processing did not provide evidence…

Revised version of a paper presented at the 1970 summer meeting of the Linguistic Society of America, Columbus, Ohio. Research leading to the paper supported in part by a National Science Foundation grant to the Phonology Laboratory, University of California, Berkeley. (VM)